With degenerative changes to his spine that leave him barely able to walk and in excruciating pain, a 79-year-old Huron County man has waited four months for surgeons in London to decide if they’ll see him.

His distraught wife knew it would be fruitless to phone the spine centre at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and ask when a decision would be made, because until last week, those who phoned the centre were greeted with a prerecorded message whose essence was this: We’re too busy to return calls.

“We receive over 400 referrals per month,” a taped voice message said when patients phone the clinic. “We do not accept phone calls inquiring about referral status.”

That message was replaced last week with a less offensive one after The Free Press asked questions of the spine centre and LHSC — the new message says patients can ask their referring physicians to phone on their behalf.

But that’s little solace to the wife of the Huron County man. “He can barely walk. The pain is incredible,” said the woman, who asked for anonymity for fear of alienating those whose treatment her husband seeks.

A MRI scan in early June showed degenerative changes to his spine, and therapy has not lessened the pain or improved his mobility, she said.

The Free Press asked last week to speak to Dr. Kevin Gurr and Dr. Parham Rasoulinejad, but their office assistant replied they wouldn’t be available to speak until Oct. 19. Over the weekend, Rasoulinejad wrote to say it would take some time to review their numbers with other spine surgeons in London to provide an accurate assessment.

The Free Press asked LHSC chief executive Murray Glendining why the clinic takes so long to decide about referrals and how many patients are turned away. Though he didn’t answer questions about the clinic, he said long waits are concerning and caused by inadequate funding across Ontario.

“Long waits cause patients undue stress and can in some cases lead to their conditions worsening. Hospitals are at the forefront of the system-wide issue of demand exceeding available resources,” Glendining wrote. “Our staff and physicians work hard to manage within these constraints. Our wait lists are reviewed constantly by clinicians to re-prioritize wait time for those patients with greatest clinical need.”

Though it’s not clear why it takes the spine clinic so long to decide which patients to examine, such delays wouldn’t be tolerated at an leading American hospital for spine surgery, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Md.

“You will have an answer within 48 hours,” said Dr. Ali Bydon, a spinal surgeon who also directs a surgical outcomes laboratory. “You can’t keep a patient hanging for four months not knowing if they’ll be seen. Something like that would not be tolerated.”

Some patients need surgery quickly to address conditions that can grow rapidly worse. Others have issues whose seriousness can’t be assessed until they are physically examined by a neurosurgeon. Still others would benefit from physiotherapy and other interventions, so they need to know what to do next, Bydon said.

Deciding on a referral takes precious little time, too, as long as a hospital uses an efficient computerized system that routes MRI reports in e-mails to the surgeons who will decide, he said.

“It takes about a minute per patient,” Bydon said.

When hospitals, take months, not minutes, to decide whether to see a patient, either their process is inefficient or they lack the support staff to make it run smoothly, he said.